Нора Робертс - Megan’s Mate

Her lips were there to meet his when he shifted, to linger, to heat. But when he reached up, groaning, to cup her breasts, she drew back.

“Wait.” Though her hands trembled, she freshened the liniment. With her eyes on his, she spread her fingers over his chest. “They put marks on you,” she murmured.

“I put more on them.”

“Nathaniel the dragon-slayer. Lie still,” she whispered, and bent close to kiss the scrapes and bruises on his face. “I'll make it all go away.”

His heart was pounding. She could feel it rocket against her palm. In the lamplight, his eyes were dark as smoke. The robe pooled around her knees when she straddled him. She massaged his shoulders, his arms, his hands, kissing the scraped knuckles, laving them with her tongue.

The air was like syrup, thick and sweet. It caught in his lungs with each labored breath. No other woman had ever made him feel helpless, drained and sated, all at once.

“Megan, I need to touch you.”

Watching him, she reached for the belt of the robe, loosened it. In one fluid movement, the silk slid from her shoulders. Beneath she wore a short slip of the same color and texture. As he reached up, one thin strap spilled off her shoulder.

She closed her eyes, let her head fall back, as his hands stroked over the silk, then beneath. The colors were back, all those flashing, dazzling lights that had erupted in the sky. Stars wheeled inside her head, beautifully hot. Craving more, she rose over him, took him into her with a delicious slowness that had them both gasping.

She shuddered when he arched up, gripping her hips in his hands. Now the colors seemed to shoot into her blood, white-hot, and her skin grew damp and slick. Suddenly greedy, she swooped down, devouring his lips, fingers clutching the bruised flesh she'd sought to soothe.

“Let me.” She moaned and pressed his hands against her breasts. “Let me.”

With a wildness that staggered him, she drove him hard, riding him like lightning. He called out her name as his vision dimmed, as the frantic need convulsed like pain inside him. Release was like a whiplash that stung with velvet.

She tightened around him like a fist and shattered him.

Weak as water, she flowed down, rested her head on his chest. “Did I hurt you?”

He couldn't find the strength to wrap his arms around her and let them lie limp on the bed. “I can't feel anything but you.”

“Nathaniel.” She lifted her head to press a kiss to his thundering heart. “There's something I forgot to tell you yesterday.”

“Hmm... What's that?”

“I love you, too.” She watched his eyes open, saw the swirl of emotion darken them.

“That's good.” His arms, no longer weak, circled her, cradled her. “I don't know if it's enough, but—”

He turned his lips to hers to quiet her. “Don't mess it up. 'For love's sake only,' Megan. That's enough for tonight.” He kissed her again. “Stay with me.”

“Yes.”

Fireworks were one thing, but when the Calhouns put their heads together planning Coco's engagement party, there promised to be plenty of skyrockets.

Everything from a masked ball to a moonlight cruise had been considered, with the final vote going to dinner and dancing under the stars. With only a week to complete arrangements, assignments were handed out.

Megan squeezed time out of each day to polish silver, wash crystal and inventory linens.

“All this fuss.” Colleen thumped her way to the closet where Megan was counting napkins. “When a woman her age straps herself down to a man, she should have the sense to do it quietly.”

Megan lost count and patiently began again. “Don't you like parties, Aunt Colleen?”

“When there's a reason for them. Never considered putting yourself under a man's thumb reason to celebrate.”

“Coco's not doing that. Dutch adores her.”

“Humph. Time will tell. Once a man's got a ring on your finger, he doesn't have to be so sweet and obliging.” Her crafty eyes studied Megan's face. “Isn't that why you're putting off that big-shouldered sailor? Afraid of what happens after the 'I-dos'?”

“Of course not.” Megan laid a stack of linens aside before she lost count again. “And we're talking about Coco and Dutch, not me. She deserves to be happy.”

“Not everybody gets what they deserve,” Colleen shot back. “You'd know that well, wouldn't you?”

Exasperated, Megan whirled around. “I don't know why you're trying to spoil this. Coco's happy, I'm happy. I'm doing my best to make Nathaniel happy.”

“I don't see you out buying any orange blossoms for yourself, girl.” “Marriage isn't the answer for everyone. It wasn't for you.”

“No, I'm too smart to fall into that trap. Maybe you're like me. Men come and go. Maybe the right one goes with the rest, but we get by, don't we? Because we know what they're like, deep down.” Colleen eased closer, her dark eyes fixed on Megan's face. “We've known the worst of them. The selfishness, the cruelty, the lack of honor and ethics. Maybe one steps into our lives for a moment, one who seems different. But we're too wise, too careful, to take that shaky step. If we live our lives alone, at least we know no man will ever have the power to hurt us.”

“I'm not alone,” Megan said in an unsteady voice.

“No, you have a son. One day he'll be grown, and if you've done a good job, he'll leave your nest and fly off to make his own.”

Colleen shook her head, and for one moment she looked so unbearably sad that Megan reached out. But the old woman held herself stiff, her head high.

“You'll have the satisfaction of knowing you escaped the trap of marriage, just as I did. Do you think no one ever asked me? There was one,” Colleen went on, before Megan could speak. “One who nearly lulled me in before I remembered, before I turned him away, before I risked the hell my mother had known.”

Colleen's mouth thinned at the memory. “He tried to break her in every way, with his rules, his money, his need to own. In the end, he killed her, then he slowly, slowly, went mad. But not with guilt. What ate at him, I think, was the loss of something he'd never been able to fully own. That was why he rid the house of every piece of her, and locked himself in his own private purgatory.”

“I'm sorry,” Megan murmured. “I'm so sorry.”

“For me? I'm old, and long past the time to grieve. I learned from my experience, as you learned from yours. Not to trust, never to risk. Let Coco have her orange blossoms, we have our freedom.”

She walked away stiffly, leaving Megan to flounder in a sea of emotion.

Colleen was wrong, she told herself, and began to fuss with napkins again. She wasn't cold and aloof and blocked off from love. Just days ago she'd declared her love. She wasn't letting Baxter's shadow darken what she had with Nathaniel.

Oh, but she was. Wearily she leaned against the doorjamb. She was, and she wasn't sure she could change it. Love and lovemaking didn't equal commitment. No one knew that better than she. She had loved Baxter fully, vitally. And that was the shadow. Even knowing that what she felt for Nathaniel was fuller, richer, and much, much truer, she couldn't dispel that doubt.

She would have to think it through, calmly, as soon as she had time. The answer was always there, she assured herself, if you looked for it long enough, carefully enough. All she had to do was process the data.

She tossed down her neatly counted napkins in disgust. What kind of woman was she? she wondered. She was trying to turn emotions into equations, as if they were some sort of code she had to decipher before she could know her own heart.

That was going to stop. She was going to stop. If she couldn't look into her own heart, it was time to...

Her thoughts trailed off, circled back, swooping down on one errant idea like a hawk on a rabbit.

Oh, God, a code. Leaving the linens in disarray, she flew down the hall to her own bedroom.

Fergus's book was where she'd left it, lying neatly on the corner of her desk. She snatched it up and began flipping frantically through pages.

It didn't have to be stock quotations or account numbers, she realized. It didn't have to be anything as logical as that. The numbers were listed in the back of the book, after dozens of blank sheets—after the final entry Fergus had written. On the day before Bianca died.

Why hadn't she seen it before? There were no journal entries, no careful checks and balances after that date. Only sheet after blank sheet. Then the numbers, formed in a careful hand.

A message, Megan wondered, something he'd been compelled to write down but hadn't wanted prying eyes to read. A confession of guilt, perhaps? Or a plea for understanding?

She sat and took several clearing breaths. They were numbers, after all, she reminded herself. There was nothing she couldn't do with numbers.

An hour passed, then two. As she worked, the desk became littered with discarded slips of paper. Each time she stopped to rest her eyes or her tired brain, she wondered whether she had tumbled into lunacy even thinking she'd found some mysterious code in the back of an old book.

But the idea hooked her, kept her chained to the desk. She heard the blast of a horn as a tour boat passed. The shadows lengthened from afternoon toward evening.

She grew only more determined as each of her efforts failed. She would find the key. However long it took, she would find it.

Something clicked, causing her to stop, sit back and study anew. As if tumblers had fallen into place, she had it. Slowly, painstakingly, she transcribed numbers into letters and let the cryptogram take shape.

The first word to form was Bianca.

“Oh, God.” Megan pressed her hand to her lips. “It's real.”

Step by step she continued, crossing out, changing, advancing letter by letter, word by word. When the excitement began to build in her, she pushed it back. This was an answer she would find only with her mind. Emotions would hurry her, cause mistakes. So she thought of nothing but the logic of the code.

The figures started to blur in front of her eyes. She forced herself to close them, to sit back and relax until her mind was clear again. Then she opened them again, and read.

Bianca haunts me. I have no peace. All that was hers must be put away, sold, destroyed. Do spirits walk? It is nonsense, a lie. But I see her eyes, staring at me as she fell. Green as her emeralds. I will leave her a token to satisfy her. And that will be the end of it. Tonight I will sleep.

Breathless, Megan read on. The directions were very simple, very precise. For a man going mad with the enormity of his own actions, Fergus Calhoun had retained his conciseness.

Tucking the paper in her pocket, Megan hurried out. She didn't consider alerting the Calhouns. Something was driving her to finish this herself. She found what she needed in the renovation area in the family wing. Hefting a crowbar, a chisel, a tape measure, she climbed the winding iron steps to Bianca's tower.

She had been here before, knew that Bianca had stood by the windows and watched the cliffs for Christian. That she had wept here, dreamed here, died here.

The Calhouns had made it charming again, with plump, colorful pillows on the window seat, delicate tables and china vases. A velvet chaise, a crystal lamp.

Bianca would have been pleased.

Megan closed the heavy door at her back. Using the tape measure, she followed Fergus's directions. Six feet in from the door, eight from the north wall.

Without a thought to the destruction she was about to cause, Megan rolled up the softly faded floral carpet, then shoved the chisel between the slats of wood.

It was hard, backbreaking work. The wood was old, but thick and strong. Someone had polished it to a fine gleam. She pried and pulled, stopping only to flex her straining muscles and, when the light began to fail, to switch on the lamps.

The first board gave with a protesting screech. If she'd been fanciful, she might have thought it sounded like a woman. Sweat dripped down her sides, and she cursed herself for forgetting a flashlight. Refusing to think of spiders, or worse, she thrust her hand into the gap. She thought she felt the edge of something, but no matter how she stretched and strained, she couldn't get a grip. Grimly resigned, she set to work on the next board.

Swearing at splinters and her own untried muscles, she fought it loose. With a grunt, she tossed the board aside, and panting, stretched out on her stomach to grope into the hole.